A row with nobody in it still has something to say

A zero is never a digit

An empty row says its condition in words, and the count slot stays empty. “0” is a score, and this card keeps no score. The card's own total obeys the same rule: a journey nobody has stepped with yet says so in a sentence.

The tile carries the tense too, and it is the same tense the ground carries. Dashes mean someone can still arrive, whether the window is open right now or has yet to come. Faces mean people came. Nothing drawn at all means the row is settled and nobody can ever arrive. The slot keeps its width even when it draws nothing, so every role label stays in one column and only the sentence gains room.

still possible people came settled for good

Dashes go on every still-possible row, including the Celebrators row waiting on a finale nobody has written yet. The founder ruled it that way in one line: one rule for every possible row beats a special Companions case.

A chevron promises a page

The chevron means there are people behind this row and a tap will show you them. An empty row carries no chevron and does not tap, because the people page it would open has nothing to list.

The row stays. The affordance is what comes and goes, and it returns the moment the first person arrives.

Count and chevron travel together, so a row is either a doorway with a number on it or a sentence. It is never a doorway into an empty room.

The grey wash rides on top of all of it, and it is tensed. An empty row keeps its copy, its role dot, its tile rule and its label column exactly as ruled here. It takes the grey ground only once it is settled: the window closed, nobody came, and nobody ever can. While the row is still possible it stays on the card's white paper, because grey would tell a door that is open that it is shut. Grey and an empty tile always travel together, and so do dashes and paper.

You are marked by the ground you stand on

In any row the viewer belongs to, the row takes a wash in that row's role color, the role title switches to that role's darkened title tone, the sentence stays ink, and the viewer's face leads the facepile. The mark is the whole row, so it survives being shrunk, screenshotted and reposted. Specimen 01 below is the hardest case rendered true: the viewer is a Companion, a Starter and a Celebrator on Marco's journey, so all three rows are member rows in three different colors.

One accent per card was raised against this and overruled on sight. That rule protects a card from competing accent claims. Three role washes make one claim, in three shades of the same voice: these rows are yours. The founder judged the three-role card full screen, between the hero and the finale card, before ruling.

The tile and the ground carry one identical tense. That alignment is the whole logic of the rule: a row goes grey, and drops its tile, only once it is settled and empty, when the window has closed and nobody can ever arrive. Every empty row that is still possible wears dashes on the card's white paper, whether its window is open right now or has yet to come. Grey means closed for good. White means still possible.

The three that lost. All four candidates honored the standing constraints: no raw accent carries small text, rows never lift, role colors stay in their canon roles.

Contrast, measured. The -text twins are tuned for paper, and on a wash of their own hue they land under AA: at the ruled wash strengths the Companion title measured 4.16:1 and the Starter title 4.38:1. The washes are what the founder judged, so the washes are unchanged and each title took one step deeper instead. Every title and every sentence now clears 4.5:1.

Sentences are --muted #666360 throughout, on every ground. A row with nobody behind it keeps the ink title it always had, on white and on grey alike: greying the copy was tried and dropped, because --faint on the grey wash measures 2.16:1 and the wash already carries the absence.